Traditionally, advertising to consumers has been accomplished using passive means in that advertisements have been strategically presented in printed publications, on billboards, and through radio, television and internet-based media with the hope that consumers would read, view, listen to, or otherwise pay attention to the advertisements. These types of passive advertising are generally ineffective in that the advertiser usually has no means for knowing which consumers have seen or heard the advertiser's advertisement. The inability to collect information concerning the identity of the consumer and how closely the consumer scrutinized or paid attention to the advertisement has limited the value of traditional advertising systems and methods. The potential of data mining to collect consumer information related to advertising viewing and listening habits is underutilized by conventional advertising.
Conventional advertisements are often ignored by consumers because they are presented passively and fail to engage the consumers. A need exists for interactive advertising systems and methods that use interactive games and multimedia presentations to entertain the consumer and which can be used for data mining purposes to collect personal identifying information that can be related to each specific consumer's shopping and advertisement browsing habits.